WARNING: THIS BLOG MAY BE ADDICTIVE

Well, I have to confess that there is a part of me that hopes so! But my title today is, at least to me, very obviously a spoof.

People need to be careful about spoofs though. Sometimes they take on a life of their own.

Consider Ivan Goldberg, a respected physician who specializes in treating individuals with mood disorders. He fabricated the term “Internet Addiction Disorder” in 1995. It was intended to be satirical, and he patterned his list of diagnostic criteria for the disorder after the entry for pathological gambling in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (“DSM”) — the authoritative work on psychiatric disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association. A copy of Goldberg’s parody can be found here.

Perhaps it was the technical way it was written, or perhaps it was because it struck a nerve among those who sometimes feel widowed as a result of significant Internet use by loved ones, but the parody caught on. Some thought it was real — even a few serious and respected publications were fooled — and many people began to accept that Internet Addiction Disorder was legitimately recognized.

In the fifteen years since Goldberg’s spoof, there has been increasing research on the effect of a variety of modern forms of technology on the human brain. One of the more interesting is the Starcraft study. Starcraft is a military science-fiction strategy game that has received enthusiastic accolades from those in the video-game industry, who have praised it as one of the best video games ever. The multiplayer version of it has gained particular popularity in South Korea.

Because it is so good, a lot of people want to play it. And some of them spend a lot of time playing it. Of the eleven participants in a the study, six had dropped out of school for two months because of the amount of time they were playing Starcraft and two were divorced by their spouses as a direct result of the time they put into the game. Psychiatrists at the Chung Ang University in South Korea tested a treatment of this group by prescribing the antidepressant Bupropion for six weeks, resulting in their playing time decreasing by about a third. MRI studies of their brains by the Brain Institute at the University of Utah showed increased brain activity in three areas that was not present in a control group when shown images from the game.

Many people remain dismissive of the idea that there can be such a disorder as Internet Addiction, and suggest that the treatment with an antidepressant works because those individuals were depressed — under that view, the excessive time playing Starcraft is a sympton of depression, not of a new type of disorder. They perhaps spend so much time playing in an effort to escape from the sadness that their depression causes. Known psychiatric disorders of obsession and compulsion are other likely candidates for disorders that are sometimes manifested by excessive Internet usage and game playing.

The game Lineage II is another multiplayer online game, also extremely popular in South Korea. Instead of the science-fiction theme of Starcraft, though, Lineage II has a fantasy theme. The makers of the game, NCsoft Corporation and NC Interactive, Inc., were sued about a year ago by Craig Smallwood, a 51-year-old resident of Hawaii who claims that he became addicted to the game. His complaint asserts that over the period of 2004-2009, he played the game some 20,000 hours — that comes out to an average of 11 hours a day, every day of the year, for five years. When his access to the game was cut off, he claims to have “suffered extreme and serious emotional distress and depression,… been unable to function independently,… suffered psychological trauma,… was hospitalized, and … requires treatment and therapy three times a week.”

In a decision in August of this year, the judge in the case, Alan C. Kay, dismissed some of the causes of action but declined to dismiss them all. The causes of action that remain, and which Smallwood presumably will now attempt to prove, include defamation, negligence, gross negligence, and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The full opinion (which considers a number of procedural issues at some length) can be read here.

Although some commentators have ridiculed the decision, finding it stretches credibility to allow a cause of action to proceed on the basis of Internet addiction, it is worth noting that this ruling is still at a very early stage of the litigation. This was a ruling on a motion brought by the defendants, meaning that the plaintiff’s assertions were necessarily considered in their most favorable light and assumed to be true. Those claims that were dismissed — misrepresentation, unfair trade practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and assessment of punitive damages — were found by the court to have no merit even if all of the assertions were true and construed in that most favorable way.

It is likely to be an arduous and uphill battle now to prove his assertions and to prevail on the surviving causes of action. Currently, Internet addiction is not a disorder recognized by the DSM and this is likely to be an important factor in the remainder of the litigation. It is also true, though, that some serious researchers advocate including Internet addiction in the next edition of the DSM, currently scheduled for release in 2013. This advocacy has been formal, appearing in prestigious peer-reviewed journals such as the American Journal of Psychiatry, but it still appears that those in the psychiatric-research community who advocate including it currently remain in the minority.

The ultimate decision of the American Psychiatric Association will likely have a strong impact on litigation. Courts will take notice of such an expert assessment, whichever way it goes. If the next edition of the DSM includes Internet addiction as a disorder, expect to see many more lawsuits like those brought by Smallwood, and expect them to have a greater chance of success than currently seems likely. Also expect the producers of Internet content to respond and seek ways to avoid any liability.

The author, Patrick M. Boucher, is a patent attorney living near Denver, Colorado and working at Marsh Fischmann & Breyfogle. He holds a Ph.D. in physics as well as a J.D. He is an active member of the American Physical Society, and is admitted to practice law in the states of Colorado and New York, as well as to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is also a member of the Authors Guild and of the Colorado Authors League.